


When The Time Comes

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [282]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bodyguard, F/M, Female Loki (Marvel), Love Confessions, Magic, Mention of Past Abduction, Mutual Pining, Penetrative Sex, Precognition, Queen Loki, Rampant Abuse of Google Translate, Ritual Sex, Rituals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-06-23 13:23:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19702240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: “When the time comes,” he said again, calmly, “I am coming with you.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Security Guard AU. Prompt from this [generator](https://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator).
> 
> Note: _Donar_ is an Old High German name for Thor.
> 
> And if you are new to the Mental Mimosa series, I strongly suggest you read an important note about how MM works [here](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1012767).

“When the time comes,” he said again, calmly, “I am coming with you.”

The first time that he’d said, some part of her had been amused by his audacity; it was in every way quite unlike him. Donar was in his heart a soldier, albeit now a personal one, and Loki had never, in all the years he’d stood at her side, never known him to give voice to defiance. Oh, there were times when he didn’t agree with her, that was certain enough; times when she could sense how much he wished she’d take another path, but those objections he expressed carefully, with a gentle nudge or thoughtful suggestion. He was not, in her experience, a man prone to saying _no_ \--at least, not to her.

So now that he’d done so, she couldn’t help but consider it. Damn him.

She crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows at him, leaned back in the low, cushioned seat. “Are you now? And why is that?”

He looked away uneasily and she caught her breath; another first. “ _Reigna_ ,” he said after a moment, “with your permission, I would prefer not to say.”

“You wish for me to take this as a matter of trust?”

“Yes.” Those dark brown eyes swept up to find hers and they smiled a little, a hint of his usual amusement. “Haven’t I earned it?”

It was difficult not to smile back. “Perhaps. Once or twice. But in this case, that’s not enough.”

Now it was his brows that lifted. “Hmm? Why is this?”

“Because the Hours, when they come, are the _reigna_ ’s to keep and hers alone; you know this. No one else is permitted to approach that sacred place.”

“I know how to heel a horse, _høyhet_. I am not suggesting to trespass.”

“And the journey,” she said sharply, feeling the argument’s ground slip beneath her, “is the _reigna_ ’s to make. My mother did not carry an escort, nor did my _bestemor_. I choose to follow their tradition.”

His mouth curved. “It is good, I guess, that you start such a path now. You will surprise them where they rest, yes?”

Ah, she thought, this was the Donar she knew, the one upon whom she’d long relied; the only person in the great, green world permitted to speak to her in this manner--the only one, truly, ever brave enough to have tried.

“Yes, well,” she said, reaching for slim, crystal glass, “gods forbid their afterlives be as dull as their lives. But you still haven’t answered my question, have you?”

“What question is this?”

She leaned forward and the firelight caught in her cup, set the last of her wine shining. “Tch, Donar. _Why_?”

For a moment, he looked uneasy, and then his shoulders caught, squared. He said: “I have a feeling, _reigna_ , that something will go awry if you travel alone, if I do not accompany you.”

“A feeling,” she repeated, for it was the very last thing she’d thought he would say. _Reports of bull dams in the valley_ , maybe, or _sometimes there are flash fires in spring_. Not _I have a feeling_.

“Yes.”

“Not a premonition.”

“There are no Seers among my people, _reigna_.”

“So I recall. Hence my confusion.”

“No,” he said. “You do not. Where I am from, what you name Seers are called the Known.”

“And you have this lineage within you. Is that what I’m meant to believe?”

“My grandmother,” he said simply. “The gift was hers. She did her best to nurture it within me, but in the end, such as it came, there was not enough time.”

That he could speak of his abduction so easily, without a hint of bitterness, never failed to make her blanch. That it had happened at all was awful enough; that he had woven this fact so tightly into the story his life told, the man he was in this day, made her feel sick with shame. A young man of 15 snatched from his homeland and the arms of his family because of her own grandmother’s greed--it was still difficult for her to believe. She remembered the horror of the day Donar had been paraded into court, another gem among the gold and iron her _bestmor_ ’s men had stolen. She had been only five then, barely old enough to reach the waist of her mother’s skirts, and yet she had been ordered to appear, to sit within reach of the throne, to look upon all the treasures, and see.

She had looked. She had seen. She had never forgotten the terrible, tear-stained ache of Donar’s face.

And yet somehow, in time, he had become a friend.

During her grandmother’s rule, he had disappeared, pulled into the ranks of the palace _vact_ , and by the time her mother finally sat upon the seat she had so long coveted, Donar had risen to the rank of body staff, trusted to guard the inner heart of the great house and protect the life of the queen.

No spear could have saved her, though, from the suffocating _syk_ that swept down from the valley one autumn fortnight, and by the time Loki was 21, much to her shock, the green world was hers to rule.

At first, she had kept on her mother’s bodyguard, or _livvakt_ , a fiercely red-headed woman that her mother had affectionately called _Skarlett_. But the match was not a good one; they did not trust each other. Skarlett, the new _reigna_ felt, approached her as if she were still the child she had watched grow up and not who she was now: a queen. So Loki had summoned the head of the _vakt_ , an old soldier named Bor, and asked him for a few candidates among whom she might chose.

“There is only one,” Bor had said gravely, as he said most things. Truly, the man was well named.

Loki had raised her eyebrow. “I see. And who, _kaptein,_ is that?”

“ _Reigna_ , it is a man called Donar.”

When called, Donar had knelt swiftly before her, no questions asked, the embodiment of loyalty--and yet, when Bor himself had cut into his shoulder the mark, Loki had thought for a moment that she could see where those long ago had lain, the paths they’d carved down on the man’s now-bearded face. But when Donar stood, his blood carefully staunched, she’d seen only light in his eyes, unwavering. No trace left of the pain of the past.

“Mine is yours to serve,” he’d said in Common, little trace of his Kres accent left. “And it is my pleasure, _reigna_. In good grace of the gods may I sit.”

She had held out her hand in the old way, for some reason, and he had taken it without missing a beat, brushed his lips over it in kind. “Thank you, _livvakt_. May we both.”

It had taken time, time and trial, a hundred fold of triumph and circumstance, but she had come to know him as a wise, thoughtful man, someone in whose judgement and unerring knowledge of house gossip she had come to trust as well as his sword. It was his job to be at her side always, or, at some moments, just outside of her door, and his discretion, she had learned over the years, was hers to have and to hold. He knew her secrets--most of them, anyway--and she, after fifteen years, was sure that she knew his.

But he had never spoken to her of his family before, much less of having the sight--what had he called it? The Known. 

She looked into his face, cut into warm shadows by the fire. Saw the utter certainty in his eyes; yes, she thought, he believed what he said was the truth. And yet--

“And I suppose whatever it is that will go wrong is something only you can stop, hmmm?”

“Stop?” He shook his head. “No. But from it, _reigna_ , I can protect you. This is known.”

A tremor ran down Loki’s spine, a not-at-all unpleasant feeling. Indeed, she felt, despite the strangeness of this night, more at ease than she had in weeks, ever since the Seers had come to her, grinning, pointing at their charts and calendars and saying over and over those dreaded words: _It is time_.

She sighed and made a show of shaking out her hair and setting her now-empty glass aside. “Very well, Donar,” she said. “But I have two conditions.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. First, you will ride with me only until we are in sight of the _hellig_ lake. No further. There you shall wait with me until I return.”

He dipped his chin. “I will do this.”

“And the second,” Loki said with a smile, “is that I will tell everyone that you coming was my idea.”

Donar chuckled. “ _H_ _øyhet_ ,” he said, “of you I would expect nothing less.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who's been reading along, you'll note that I've moved the end of what was part I over here to become the start of part II.

They rode out at the appointed hour, a few hours before nightfall, the wind and the sun at their backs.

For the first couple of miles, the wolves raced ahead, leaping through the grass and snapping at each other merrily until Donar whistled to them sharply and they trotted panting and grinning back.

“Tch,” he said as they took up near the horses’ heels, “you’ll tire yourselves out, _valps_ , and we will have to leave you behind, eh? Be good now.” 

They whined at him and bumped his boot with their damp faces.

“Go on now,” he said to Hanne, she of the black fur already streaked with the colors of crushed flowers and grass. “See to the _reigna_ , pup.”

He glanced over at Loki and the worry that had been murmuring in his gut found its voice a little and sang. The _reigna_ sat stiffly, almost primly, her fingers curled tight around the reigns. She had been cheerful at their departure, embracing each of the Seers in turn, and to someone who did not know her, her happiness would have seemed to match theirs. But to Donar, the lines of Loki’s mask were plain, the way each smile made her lovely face pull and strain, and he had ached to sweep an arm about her waist and draw her away from the Seers’ grasping hands, their murmured chants, their trinkets--vivid reminders to the _reigna_ of the ancient duties that lay ahead.

But he had not reached for her. He never had. That he wished to was the source of great tumult for him, one that had been unceasing from the first years of her reign.

She belonged to something larger than him, than any one person, no matter how much they loved. That knowledge had been unceasing, too, and now that they were headed towards the Hours, as the Hours raced towards them, the necessary distance between them became more stark, more important, and yet he thought as they rode away from the sunset, from the castle, from what was towards what would soon be, that he had never loved Loki more. 

No. He did not think this. In his very soul, yes, Donar knew.

When he was a boy, his _oma_ had told him stories of the life that lay ahead of him: the places he would visit, the adventures he might have, the man he would become in a land that lay beyond the sea.

“No, _oma_ ,” he had chided her, curled like a cur in her lap. “I will grow up here, with you and _Vati_. I won’t go anywhere till I’m old.”

And she had kissed his head, his _oma_ , kissed him and drawn him close and chuckled in his ear, said: “That is not your choice, my love, where your seed will grow. But trust me when I tell you, little flower, that in whatever soil the _Jungfer_ carry you to, you will flourish. This is Known.”

He had not understood her then. And when he was old enough to carry the weight of her words, he chose not to believe her. It was easy to curry doubt as a youth, as his bones began to stretch him into a young man, because his _oma'_ s eyes had grown glassy, hills forever covered in fog, and the words that spilled from her mouth were a jumble of the past, the present, and things he had assured himself she could not possibly know.

And then one morning when he was 15, he had carried in breakfast and sat by her side to spoon it when she grabbed his hand tightly, her grip as fierce as a wolf’s with supper caught in its jaws. “Little flower,” she said, those clouds turned towards his face, “the soil sings for you. Its fingers are coming; don’t weep. You will flourish where you land, my child. This, oh this, _this_ \--this has always been Known.”

“ _Oma_ ?” he cried as she fell back, contented, her eyes closed and her countenance now sweet and terribly still. “ _Oma_ , what--?”

Her fingers slipped from his and as her last breath found his ears, Donar knew, he _Knew_ \--this was his first moment of sight.

He knew when he rose and set the bowl aside that this was the last time he would stand in that room. He knew, when he reached the kitchen and his father turned to him, startled, that this, the hug he pulled his _vati_ into, would be, too, the last. He knew, before the sounds of the fire reached him, before the shouts of the invaders shattered the last moment of peace he would know in this part of his life, that today was the day his _oma_ had forseen and tried to make him understand was inevitable. This was it, he thought, staring up at the sky, the tips of the trees against whose height he had measured himself for so long. _Good bye_.

But walking in the Known did not blanch his feelings, did not stem the awful flood of pain and rage and grief he felt as he felt the sea about him, the unfamiliar sway of the boat, and wished with all he was to once more be home. It had taken him months, in fact, to greet a new day without weeping, to open his eyes in the long, cool quarters of the _vakt_ and not find his pillow as damp as if he had rolled it in dew. He spoke little in that time. He ate less. In his dreams, he screamed at the _Jungfer_ to free him, to save him, to take the chains of the Known far away.

They did not. But they heard his cries; he was sure of it. They did not grant his wish but they reminded him every night behind the curtains of his eyes that he was not, would never be alone.

In time, then, as in all things, the seasons of his mind began to change. He found pleasure in his work, in learning how to hone the potential of his body. In the _vakt_ , the _kaptein_ Bor treated him no differently than any other; if he knew the story of how Donar came to be in his ranks, the old man, it seemed, did not care. What he cared about was dedication and skill, about one’s willingness to set aside what was one’s own--pain, pleasure, body, or time--to make room for the _reigna_ , whatever her wish. Donar found, to his great surprise, that not only did he excel at the physical training required but he was also very, very good at this. It helped, he thought, that he had only truly come into his own after the _reigna_ whose soldiers had captured him--Loki’s _bestemor_ \--had let go of the earth and died. Had he been asked to serve her, he knew, it would have been difficult; there were still in his heart many tears.

He had been promoted to guard the house of Loki’s mother upon her ascension and in that house, for nearly half his life now, he had remained. 

But it was in Loki’s light that he had flourished, in her presence that he had found his true place. Never in all his life had he felt more content than when they sat in her chambers together, his the only presence permitted behind her great, oak doors, when he watched her pace and listened to hear speak as she unravelled this problem or that, when he asked questions and raised pitfalls as she pulled her hair from its carefully woven crown and frowned at him, laughed at him, argued with him until the small hours when the wine was cold and her face was exhausted, until he had to goad her into taking a bath.

“If the _reigna_ cannot care for herself,” he would say, “how can we say that she can rule a whole land?”

“ _Dra dit peppern gror_ ,” she would spit, the invective spit by her laughter. “Finish your wine and get out of my sight. Yours is none so pleasing, either.”

He would chuckle. “Ah, yes, but I must only govern myself.”

She would throw something at him then, sometimes; a crumpled letter or a shoe or a book. “Exactly, _livvakt_! So do us both a kindness and stop trying to govern me.”

These were the moments he loved her most, when she was less like the _reigna_ and more like Loki herself: dark waves loose about her face and her green eyes sharp and shining and something like the devil chasing itself around the curves of her mouth.

An exaggerated bow. Sometimes, a snort. Always, a rise to his feet. “I will look to it, _høyhet_ , and make an effort again tomorrow.”

“Yes, Donar,” she would say, her gown scratching softly at the ground as she strode towards the bathing room, already wriggling free of the heavy folds with one freckled shoulder. “See that you do.” 

Now, as they moved through the fading light, he let his mind drift to a few nights that had not been like the others: evenings when the burdens of the land, of its people, its endless complications, had seen her sagging after supper, stumbling as soon as the door closed behind them, the jade of her eyes faded almost to gray.

On those nights, she seemed so small to him, like a painted leaf, fragile, as if another word from a messenger bearing bad news would crush her soul into so much dust. On those nights, he would carry her to the bathing room and lean her gently against the low wooden beam on which her bathing potions sat. He would watch her fingers turn into the wood enough to keep her standing and then he would reach for the clasps at her back.

“ _Reigna_ ,” he would say, softly. “I will open this now, hmm?”

She would nod, her head heavy on her neck, and say: “Yes.”

On those nights, she would wave the water full and he would unwind her from her robes and urge her body into the soft sink of the tub, watch the turns of her body disappear beneath its milky white waves. He would lift her hair and knot it loosely at her neck and she would sigh, the heat of the water already working, the tense clouds of the day beginning to lift at last. 

“Shall I tell you a story?” he would ask.

If she were awake enough, she would tip her head back and look at him, then. “The one about your _vati_ and the--what do you call it? The tall brown beast covered in fur?”

“Ah. A bärin.”

A flicker of a smile. “Yes. That one, then.”

On those nights, he did not want her as the body of one craves another. He did not feel, as most might have, a swell in his sex of unerring need or of heat. Instead, as he sat on a low stool at Loki’s side, the lily smell of the water around him, what Donar felt was something settled and soft, as if time itself were silken like Loki’s hair and slipping slow and sure through his fingers. In those moments, as his _høyhet_ struggled to shake free of the pains of the day, he was filled with a kind of infinite loving, as if he were a blossom floating, rooted, at home in the stretch of the sea.

“Very well,” he would say, settling himself more comfortable upon the stool as her toes peeped above the edge of the water, as the back of her neck against the edge of the tub found a measure of rest. “The story, it begins and ends in the same place, as such stories do, mmm? With my father biting off more than he could chew.”

That he loved Loki, then, had long since been a certainty, though until two nights ago she had been the one thing in his life about which the Known had never spoken.

So when they had, there was no choice, yes? But to listen.


	3. Chapter 3

What was said to him was not said but shown, shown in a series of muddied impressions like stones cast to the bottom of a lake. He _felt_ , too, as sometimes was the way; felt a presence near his _reigna_ , an unfamiliar body, something lurking unseen and unknown in the dark. What he Knew most clearly was Loki, standing, the light of a thousands stars swimming over her shoulders, down her skin, her face turned upwards, her gaze cast towards some far-away place. She felt safe and yet she was not, wherever she was; there lay about her somewhere something prepared to catch her unawares.

He Knew there was danger but could not name it or see it. Sometimes this was his curse. For to Know was to be aware of all that lay out of sight, to feel the weight of all one did not know; it was a balance he had worked hard to maintain his whole adult life.

But the next morning when he woke--for this is where the _Jungfer_ had reached him, in the soft valley that was his sleep--he startled and tumbled from his bed for he understood that the _reigna_ would, if he did not act quickly, soon well and truly out of his sight.

So he had bided his time and when they were alone in the evening-time, he had spoken with a calm he did not feel, an equanimity that when he looked upon her face he found he could not possess.

“When the time comes,” he had said, the shiver of the dream on his lips, “I am coming with you.”

And now they rode together, he at her side, she at his, and there was nothing, he told himself, from which he and the wolves and his sword could not shield her. They rode together and so, whatever strangeness the Hours brought, his _høyhet_ would be safe.

“Donar,” Loki said.

“Yes, _reigna_?”

“Another hour or so and we shall need to stop for the night. We’re keeping quick time; we must ensure our arrival is not early.”

They were three days away, he wanted to tell her; one good day and two hard ones. To be ahead of schedule was a good thing. 

But the Hours were _reigna_ ’s to keep. It was for her that they came, so there was no reason to argue with her. She knew their ways better than anyone on the green earth and he did not.

“We shall stop whenever you say.”

That made her laugh. “I don’t know that I care for you to be so agreeable.”

“No?”

“No.” She tossed her hair and turned her head, a puff of her smile found him in the dark. “I rather liked it when you said _no_ so plainly yesterday.”

“You did not.”

“Well, _like_ is perhaps the wrong term, hmm? Shall we say that I _admired_?”

He grinned. “To this, I can agree.”

She laughed again, the sound spilling out over the grass, over the wolves’ backs, over the pricked ears of her big, midnight horse. “And now you’re teasing me. Who are you, sir, and what have you done with my Donar, hmm?”

“Perhaps, _høyhet_ , you have left him back at the palace.”

“Oh dear. And after he made such a case to accompany me. Whatever shall I do without him, eh, besides take this journey in my own way.”

He caught the lilt in her voice not quite in time. “What--?”

With a shout, she set her heels to the horse and he bolted clear ahead; the male, Aksel, running after her, barking joyfully in the sweet, evening dark.

And behind her, she left Donar, his heart thick in his chest. _I love you_ , he thought in his own tongue, one rusted but never forgotten. _And what I would give to be able to say this to you, Loki, as your hand brushes the curves of my face._

A bright bellow in the darkness. “Donar, are you coming?”

He raised his voice to meet hers and set his mount apace, bid it run towards her with abandon. “Yes, _reigna_!” he shouted. “I am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today in: I have no idea where this is going but I'm enjoying the ride--


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, for those who are reading along: I've moved what was the last bit of the previous chapter to serve as the opening to this one.

They slept wild that night, at the base of a slope of twice-trampled on grass. Flattened, at least, it served to shield Loki’s head from the earth.

Donar built a fire and she tended to the horses, led them to drink at a reluctant little stream, and when she returned, she found she did not wish to eat, only drink.

“Water is not enough,” Donar rumbled, squinting at her from the other side of the fire. “Tomorrow will be a difficult ride.”

“I know that.”

“Then it’s important you eat.”

“No,” she said, capping her waterskin and stretching out on her back. “I’m not hungry.”

But what she was, in those last hours of the night, was cold, the sort of cold that made her bones hurt and her teeth set themselves to rattle. Her cloak could not sooth her, nor the rough quilt the Seers had given her. Never mind that her hands told her that the ground was warm, still clinging to the afternoon heat; what her body said, every inch above the wrists, was that no matter how near to the sputtering fire she dared to lay, she was terribly, painfully cold. So cold that it hurt to lie down.

“ _Reigna_?” Donar’s voice in the embers, sleepy. “What is wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said with, to her horror, tears as plain as day in her voice. “Just having trouble getting comfortable. I’m fine. Please don’t let me disturb your sleep.”

The smoke stirred as he shifted beneath his own quilt and sat up. _“Høyhet._ What is it? Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m damn well not. I’m just cold!”

“Cold?” She could see the edges of his face and feel his worry, his curiosity. “But here, it is very warm.”

“I didn’t say it made sense,” she snapped. A tear crashed to her cheek. “And you asked.”

He slid towards her, a felted snake in the dirt, and then stopped when they were hip to hip. “You will not like my next question.”

“I’m not ill, _livvakt_.”

Donar chuckled. “As I said, I knew you would not.”

“If you’re going to mock me, at least have the decency to go back to sleep. I’d prefer not to have an audience for my indignities."

She heard more than felt his arm slide around her shoulders. It was warm, gloriously so, as if he’d dipped it in the sun, and she could not stop her gasp. “Tch,” Donar said. “From you, I’ve seen worse.”

It took her a moment to understand why his voice was so changed; more than sleep, there was something warmer in it, a lilt that wasn’t usually there--the soft bleed of his native tongue, she realized as she leaned into him, accepted what he gave without question. Kres, a gentler language than Common, one that in all the years they’d known each other, she’d rarely heard him speak. Only, she thought, her eyes drifting downwards like snow, in those rare, quiet times when she lay embraced by the water, the milky tides that she needed when she was worn down by the day’s sting; only then did he speak in his native tongue as he told her stories that Common had no words for: stories of creatures that bowed large and touched tame, of skies that lit up like lanterns, of people she would never meet, of those he had loved, once, and would not see again. 

“Do you sleep?” he said. The words tumbled into her hair.

“Not yet.” 

He grunted and leaned back a little, pulling her with him, and turned his shoulder, hers, towards the ground. “ _Hier_ ,” he said. “Like this, eh? Tch, _liebe_. Come here.”

In his arms, it was easy to let the soft grass embrace her, to lean back and rest her head against him. His chest was flush to her back and he was a furnace and in a moment, her body had no need to shiver; it was as if she’d forgotten how.

“Sleep now,” Donar murmured. “Can you? I will hold back the night.”

There was nothing to do then but sigh, sigh and hear the wolves snoring, the horses calling to each other, the soft slip of Donar’s breath as it caught the lines of her ear, and in that way on that first night, Loki closed her eyes at last and found dreams.

*****

It was only later, halfway towards the next afternoon, that it occurred to her how odd it was to sleep in the company of another person. It was the first time she’d done so in her life.

Oh, she had slept in proximity to others: under the eyes of her mother, for instance, and of her _bestemor_ , probably, and even in the presence of Donar, but she had never shared a bed with anyone before in any manner that suggested the intimacy of sleep; finding temporary pleasure in the body of another was very much another matter, indeed.

And even those pleasures, she thought ruefully as her mount steered into the wind, such as they were, had been rare ones in her life, but then rarely had she felt any need. She could not recall, there on the grassy hills of the green world, her lovers ever holding her as Donar had--without expectation, without the spectre of an equal exchange. He had held her because she needed him to and understood without being told that their embrace was not one of equality or mutuality; she had shivered and he had reached for her without hesitation.

As they rode up into the foothills, the bright, brilliant sun at their backs, she found her mind stuck upon it, the half-remembered press of his body, the warm of his breath on her neck.

Why had she not kissed him? she wondered. Others would have, surely. Would have turned in the cradle of his embrace and found the center of his heat, the core of the sun, the soft, urgent well of his mouth. Others would have reached for his skin and smiled when they found it, shimmered, curled their backs happily when he moaned.

And he would have, wouldn’t he? Moaned and cupped her face in his palm and kissed her back, turned over her body and with his mouth pressed her deeper in the cradle of the earth.

The thought intrigued her, as such thoughts are wont to do, and she followed it as the horses’ hooves chased the grass and moved them step by perfect step towards the Hours, the carriers of her destiny.

She wondered what he would have tasted like, where he might have put his hands. It made her body beautifully sluggish to think of such things.

Were they in the palace--she on her throne and he forever at her side--she would have been angry with herself for chasing this thread. It was not the first time she had felt such a skein in her fingers, warm and wooly. It happened sometimes, this wandering of her mind. Sometimes, she needed to forgo all thoughts of duty. Sometimes, she needed to close her eyes in the midst of a war council or a ministry meeting or while she sat at the heart of the bustling banquet hall and slip away for moment in time, and in such moments, over the years, she had found thoughts of Donar before.

His hands in her hair, sometimes; his lips against her forehead. His strong, quick fingers sinking into the water of her bath, beneath the foggy surface, and finding the weight of her breast there. She could hear him, the sound he would make when he touched her, a roll of pleasure like muted thunder--and she could taste, too, the texture of her own response.

But always before, she had let go of the string before her mind could carry her away from duty too far, and she had upbraided herself, after, let it be known that such thoughts were a waste of energy, a foolish way to spend the precious seconds of time. She had looked up at him or to her side or to the corner of the room where he sat, smiling, honing the blade of his sword while she sketched out the problems of the green world with a goblet in her hand, and thought: _come now, Reigna, school yourself. Remember what he is to you._

 _Remember that no matter how close he stands or how much you rely on him, Loki, he is your_ livvakt, _yes? Only in this way can he be yours._

But now, out in the open, with only a few sunfalls between she and whatever the Hours held, it was easier to let her fingers sneak up that threat of thought, tug at it, and not worry so much about what pulling at the thing might unravel. 

He turned to her, grinning, gesturing at the vista around them, suddenly, a break in the mountains; it was almost like a break in the world.

“Sometimes, I forget,” he said.

“Forget what?”

His eyes were bright, their depths shining in the early evening sun. “How beautiful your world is, _reigna_. Your goddesses, the ones who made it, they did so very, very well.”

“All these years living here,” Loki said, “and yet you seem so surprised.”

Donar laughed and ah! it was such a joyous sound. Fit for the open sky and not for the creche of the palace. “All these years living here, yes, but the first moment seeing this place.”

Loki wanted to touch him. She ached to reach out and clasp at his hand, to squeeze the leather and imagine her fingers touching the rough skin that lay beneath, to trace if only for a second the edges of his exuberant joy. She wanted this so swiftly and with such sudden fervor that it was, for a half a breath, impossible for her to speak.

But she was the _reigna_ and the _reigna_ was never tongue tied. So she breathed again and the words came.

“Well, if you think this is something,” she said, her lips matching his smile, “then oh, dear Donar, hold tight to your reigns. You must save some of your appreciation for what lies ahead."

He tilted his head. "And what is this?"

"What else, _llivvakt_? The Lake.”


	5. Chapter 5

“The job of the _livvakt_ ,” Bor had told him long ago, “is very simple, though many think that simple means easy to understand.” The old man had lifted his eyebrows, a pair of gray crows. “Perhaps you have thought such yourself.”

“No, _kaptein_. I have not.” Here Donar had bitten his lip, a bad habit in his youth that still emerged when he was unsettled. “I’ve not thought a great deal on it at all.”

“Oh? And why is that?”

“Forgive me for speaking bluntly--”

“I would much prefer that you do.”

“--but it seemed a waste of effort for me.”

He remembered Bor’s gaze then--how sharp it was, how clearly in that moment he could see what sort of formidable soldier Bor had once been. “The goal of every member of the _vakt_ is to be chosen to protect the body, is it not?”

“It is, yes, but--”

“So why would you consider sparing such a serious matter even a moment of consideration to be a--what was the word you used, eh?” 

“A waste.”

He had been more than thirty then, sitting in the dusty keep of Bor’s chamber, a set of rooms set below ground not too far from the keep. There were books strewn about and swords hung up, revered; between them, on a low table, had sat two worn mugs of beer. It was not a familiar space to him then, nor a foreign one; his visits were not unusual but rare. When he had received the summons after supper, as the _vakt_ spilled laughing towards their barracks, it had come less as a shock than a jolt.

The same was true for those barely old enough to steady their swords as it was for those like him to whom Bor had become brother-in-arms: when the old man wished to speak with you, you went. He hadn’t known what to expect, but the role of the _livvakt_? Certainly not. Which was perhaps why he’d handled the matter so badly. 

“Yes,” Bor said. He tipped his head. “That was it. Why?”

“ _Kaptein_ , no one born outside of the land has ever served as the _livvakt,_ have they?"

"No. Not one."

Donar spread his hands, entreating. "Yes, so, I saw no reason to dwell on the notion at all.”

The old man had nodded. “That is logical.”

“Thank you.”

“And also foolish.” 

“Sair?”

Bor sat forward, a hint of teeth showing. “Tch, Donar,” he chided. “You have done well becoming part of us over these many years; I imagine few could have done better. But doing so, _kamerat_ , has not served to mask that which makes you stand out.”

Donar’s face had felt a question; must have shown one, too, for Bor had laughed softly and shaken his head. “You are a skilled soldier. Surely you understand that.”

“Yes.”

“And more than skilled, you are one of the most intuitive men that I’ve ever met. Those qualities together make you formidable indeed--and quite distinct among the _vact_ . There is no question in my mind--or my gut, eh?--that you are precisely the _livvakt_ our new _reigna_ needs.”

It had seemed to Donar then that his mouth had filled with smoke; not the sort of smoke that choked him or swallowed his breath, but the kind that had always filled his grandmother’s house, that she had carried with her on her clothes and her linens when illness had dragged her to that small, sallow room in his father’s house. It was perhaps too far to say that his mouth had filled with divinity, the but there were some times, looking back, when it felt that way.

Only a moment before, he would have protested, pushed back against his _kaptein_ ’s bizarre appeal; and it was just as much madness now, wasn’t it? To think that a _reigna_ might be willing for him to overthrow generations of tradition.

He, a candlemaker’s son, kidnapped, serving as the _reigna_ ’s second skin?

Impossible, his mind told him. Impossible.

And yet the _Jungfer_ had filled his mouth with sweet smoke and the certainties of the Known, and in that instant, he had stilled his mind and spoken instead with his heart:

“If she calls for me,” he had said steadily, “then yes, _kaptein_ , I will come.”

Bor clapped him on the shoulder, a shock; a gesture of an equal, not a chief. “Very wise, Donar. Good. Though may I offer some advice?”

“Please.”

The old man had laughed. “If the _reigna_ asks you, as I did, your thoughts on the job of the _livvakt_ , I suggest you have a better answer than ‘a waste.’”

Loki hadn’t asked him that, though; she’d seemed to take for granted, even from their first private meeting, that to his position, he assigned value, because how could he not? When he’d just sworn publically to value her.

“Bor tells me that he trusts your instincts.”

“So I have recently come to understand.”

She’d chuckled, a sound he found that he liked. “Ah, so he’d not made a habit of singing your praises to you directly, is that it?”

There was a diplomatic answer and a direct one. He sensed she would prefer directness. “No.”

“Well, you’ll have no such roundaboutness to fear from me, Donar.” Her head tilted. “May I call you that? Or would you prefer simply _livvakt_? I know some in your position would rather not use their given name.”

“You may use them interchangeably as you like, _reigna_.”

“That’s hardly an answer. Of course I may. The question is what you would like.”

“I suspect there are times when you will find use in both. Though I suspect you will not use both for the same.”

It was only once the words escaped, as her dark eyes bloomed at him wide, that he recognized how familiar he sounded; he had spoken as if she were a _kamerat,_ not his queen. 

“ _Høyhet_ ,” he said quickly, “forgive me, I spoke--”

“You spoke as yourself, didn’t you?”

A fist in his stomach had tightened. Had he really failed so quickly? “Yes. I did not recall my place.”

And then her mouth had lifted, climbing ivy, and she’d sat back in her chair and reached up to unpin her hair. “Do you know when the last time was someone spoke to me as if I were a person and not the _reigna_ ? Or the bloody _reigna i vente_?, she who will be queen?"

“No.”

“Neither do I. If it’s ever damn well happened, I don’t remember it at all.” She shook her head a little and a shower of blossoms fell out as an unruly mass of black framed her face. She smiled at him again, tired now; he could see in her eyes the long effects of the evening, the day. “So,” she said, “now that you’ve treated me like a person, Donar, it would be cruel of you to take that away, I should think.”

She had seemed to him so very young, just then. As he stared, on her cheeks he’d seen the track of tears shed years ago in her grandmother’s court, a raven-capped waif he’d caught a glimpse of through his own grief on that long, terrible day--he’d forgotten that, forgotten her, that small sobbing child, until the moment right then.

“So,” she said again, “what I will value, _livvakt_ , when we speak alone like this is you. Not a model of who you think you should be, or some version of whatever _dritt_ the old guard has drilled into you. If I wanted someone who would do only as I wanted, I would’ve simply asked Bor to find me the weakest of the flock instead of its best. He says that’s you and you’ve given me no reason to disbelieve him thus far.” A flicker of a smile. “See to it that you don’t, hmm?”

The job of the _livvakt_ is very simple--though many think that simple means easy to understand.

And on its face, Donar’s role, even now, out in the wild as the night’s branches grew thick, might have appeared to be simple enough: to protect the _reigna_ , to ensure that nothing in the darkness dared to touch her, to deliver her safely to the arms of the Hours and wait patiently for her until she emerged awakened anew.

But his role, too, was to hold her, to wrap himself around the bow of her back and breathe in the sweet, dampened scent of her hair. It was to forget the glimpse of her long-familiar skin he had seen as she emerged from the stream: the way her hair clung to her shoulders, the way it dripped dark between her thighs, the way the last of the day’s sun had not been as blinding as the warm in her eyes.

“It’s awful,” she’d said as she wrapped herself in a blanket and shivered in front of the fire, “so, so damnably cold. Worse than rolling in the snows in winter.”

“Ah,” he’d said, trying to tease, “it’s just right then, is it?”

Loki had reached out and shoved at him, a flash of cool white behind the blink of the flame. “Tch! You get in there and see how brave your tongue is after!”

“No, I will learn from your mistake, _reigna_ , and risk only the freezing of my arms and my face.”

But the creek was not cold; to his hands, it was temperate, running closer to warm. The wolves splashed about in it merrily as he bathed, brave to strip off his layers and wade out to where it was deep.

_Was she ill_? he’d wondered as he floated, as he scrubbed the last two days from his hair. Was it a fever, perhaps? Some sort of strange reaction to days spent out of doors?

It had worried him then. It worried him now as he held her close and bid her to sleep. She had been clothed for hours, her body full of wine and at least a little food. He had built the fire as high as he dared before they’d laid down and the air in this part of the land carried with it the soft heat of the day. But still Loki shivered, a small, persistent tremble, that even his arms could not erase.

“Stop it,” she said wearily. “I can hear you fretting.”

“Tch. I am not."

“I’m perfectly fine,” she said. “I would tell you if I wasn’t. The Seers have said since I was a child that I was cold-natured, eh? You know this.”

He did, yes. But this was different; he Knew it. What he did not understand was why. 

She sighed. “Less than a day now, anyway, until the Hours will have me. That will give you some respite, surely; I won’t be yours to worry about, for a time.”

The moon had only to climb a little higher before sleep found her at last, before he too could close his eyes.  
  
_You will always worry for her,_ Geliebte, the _Jungfer_ murmured in the mist of his dreams. _It is Known_.


	6. Chapter 6

When the horses’ hooves began to sink into mud, when the wolves’ ears pricked and their voices became uneasy--only then did it occur to Loki how close to the Lake they now were.

No. What is truer to say is that only then did that fact become impossible for her to avoid. 

Never mind that the skies had been steadily changing all morning; that as they drew past noon and into the afternoon, the world around them, it seemed to her, had grown dreamy: the grasses were thicker and more verdant and the ground itself more flat, as if it lay in obeisance to the sky. Even their air itself had seemed to thicken, like the sweetest of smoke, until every breath was like breathing through blossoms.

It did not help matters that she was shaking, that the cold that had crept upon her again the previous evening had not in the light of day chosen to fade. She knew Donar had noticed; she could sense his eyes, always. She knew, somehow, that he was afraid.

Well, then. So was she.

Loki had believed for the whole of her life that she understood what now lay directly ahead. Her _bestemor_ had walked through the Hours, as had her mother, and she had grown up on the stories of both. Her grandmother had been called in her youth, when she was as young as Loki was when she became _reigna_ \--but then, her _bestemor_ had taken the throne at 16. She had been a wild thing, everybody said, a headstrong creature whom the crown had not tamed. This was why, it was believed, the Hours had summoned her so quickly, so that she might be turned to heel.

What the Hours had done, though, was to strengthen Loki’s grandmother. She was just as fiery when she rode back to the castle with thorns in her hair and her long legs brown from the sun, but there was a purpose to her wildness after the Hours, an inner sense, her _bestemor_ had told Loki, of being driven.

“I understood my power after that, _kjære_. That is the simplest way I can explain it. What the Hours gave me”--here her grandmother had chuckled and tossed her gray head--“was the essential knowledge that I did not need to change to meet the ways of the world, but if I went on spilling all my energies needlessly without a goal in mind, a purpose, I would have made a truly selfish sort of life. Can you understand that, my pet?”

Loki had curled more tightly into her _bestemor_ ’s lap and set her head against the soft swell of her bosom. “Not yet,” she’d said with a childish fierceness. “But I promise that I will try.”

“Which means,” Loki’s _bestemor_ had softly, “that one day you will.”

With her mother, the Hours had been less enigmatic. She was much older than her mother when the crown was placed on her brow--more than 20 years--and there were impolite whispers that the _reigna_ ’s abilities had wilted in the long shadow of her mother like flowers starved from the sun. When she had ridden for the Lake, it was the second year of her reign, and there were a few, Loki knew now, who had hoped that she would not return. It was like that sometimes, or so the stories said: sometimes, when the Hours came for a _reigna_ , the message they carried was death.

It was not so with her mother, however, for her mother returned with a singular focus: to take a man to her chamber and not free him until their bodies in concert had created a child; in the end, the task had required the efforts of three. No matter, the end result was the same that Loki’s mother said was ordained, and for seven happy months, the child had grown and Loki’s mother had glowed, her ever-present anxieties softened by the certainty that she and her baby lay under the Hours’ hands.

But something had happened, something that even the midwives could not explain, and in the depths of one terrible autumn night, the baby had emerged early, never to take even one breath.

And Loki’s mother was not the same after that. She grew deeply quiet; visitors often saw her as cold. To her daughter, she was dismissive, and to her people, she became as distant, as faded, as the mists of the far-away Lake.

When she died some years later, thrown careless from a horse, few in the green world had seen it as a mistake. There was part of the _reigna_ , the whispers in the castles went, that had yearned for her death.

Loki remembered the shock of that day, of being fetched from the council room by two grim-faced _vact_ , of marching up the long, narrow stairs to the tower, wondering if the whole of it was a dream. She remembered her mother’s body, wrapped in crimson and jade, as the _vakt_ had borne it from her mother’s room and set it solemnly on an alter in the throne room, as Loki’s _bestemor_ ’s had been, so that the people could come and see and weep.

Few tears had been shed, though, and after that first awful day, Loki had had none of her own. Nor had she bowed beneath the crown’s weight; she was her _bestemor_ ’s heir, she told herself, far more than her mother had been. She may have been young, yes, but at 21, she was ready to reign.

But what she was not ready for, she thought ruefully, as the horses slowed to an unhappy slog, was the embrace of the Hours, the infusion of her life’s work, her purpose, for these were things, truth be told, that she felt sure she’d well determined on her own. The Seers and their talk of the 

_Søstre_ were all very well and good; she had trusted them as guides her whole life. But the Hours, what the people called The Goddesses’ Hands, what need had she of them at her age? The green world prospered, the people were mostly contented; she saw no needs, as her grandmother had, to take steps to keep them in line. So what could the Hours possibly hold for her that she had not already grasped for herself?

She swallowed and felt a shiver run up her back and she wondered, for a moment, if doubting was what had doomed her mother, what had made her time with the Hours so seemingly unproductive. Never had her mother explained her sudden need for a child, while so many years after Loki’s own siring, she had any desire to undertake that experience again. And yet there could be no question that the happiest Loki had ever known her mother to be was in the fragile, fervent web of those seven months.

“Oh, Loki,” she remembered her mother saying, beaming, “I know you can’t understand it, child, but it’s so nice to have love again.”

The wind kissed Loki’s ear and she turned, certain for a moment that it carried her mother’s voice.

_So nice to have love again_.

“ _Høyhet_ , why have you stopped?”

“Have I?”

She saw Donar’s glove on hers, felt him squeeze. Realized that his horse stood next to hers, both steeds whining.

“You have," Donar said. "Did you not mean to?”

Loki shook her head. She felt dizzy, as if her mind were full of wine, and all at once she understood where she was, body and soul, and what the stars were calling her to do. 

“The horse stopped of his own volition,” she said. “He knows he’s gone far enough. As have you.”

“Hmmm?”

“The Lake is ahead. I must go to meet it.” She looked up and found his eyes. He was still clutching her hand. “Your journey stops here, my dearest friend. For me, though, it is time.”

She was off her horse and knee deep in muck before he could protest; five great steps away before she heard him shout. 

“ _Reigna_ , stop!" There was panic in his voice now. "Wait!" 

She shook her head again, smiling now, wading into that rich, scented air that felt as thick as the mud at her feet. She reached up and unfastened her hair.

“The Hours have come,” she murmured to herself, to the strange, wonderful world about her, one that with each tread took more of the cold inside her away, “and beyond their reach, my love, you must remain.”


	7. Chapter 7

Donar found his mouth stopped as if by cotton; his tongue felt wool and thick. As Loki faded into the fog, he wanted to call to her, tried to, but after his initial cry, no more words would come. Beneath him, his mount trembled, and its feet, even the wolves looked chastened, their ears back, their bodies slung low in the muck.

 _Far enough_ , the air around him seemed to say, the sullen sky. _No further. Stay. Rest_.

He could not camp in the mud, no matter how much he wished to, and so he retreated, the _reigna_ ’s horse lashed to his, the wolves plodding warily back towards the way they had come. Night was not far, he realized suddenly, which seemed to him very odd; had they truly ridden so long today? It had not felt it. He shivered, a long finger of cold creeping under his neck. This Lake that Loki had spoken of with so much wonder, of its beauty--could this strangle and unfriendly hollow truly be the same place?

As soon as the ground grew solid beneath him, he brought the party to a halt.

“Now, now, _die Kleinen_ ,” he said to the animals, stroking Hanne’s fur, rapping Askel’s nose when he drew too close to the newborn fire. “Settle down, tch. We will eat and we will sleep and when the sun comes again, perhaps our _reigna_ will have returned, yes?”

Soon enough, too, the land around them had indeed grown sullen and dark, and he watered the horses and fed the wolves and drank far too much wine himself. He had no desire to eat. That strange, thick feeling in his mouth had long since gone, but a trace of it lingered, a heaviness, that made the thought of chewing bread or even softly smoked meats an unpleasant prospect he could not endure.

 _More for the wolves, then,_ he told himself. _And they’ve earned it_.

It was odd to lay down beside the fire alone. Odder still, he thought, wrestling with the damnable, scratchy blanket, how much he missed it. He had slept without Loki for all but a few nights in his life and that he felt so restless without her, so deeply unsettled him, he found difficult to understand. He missed the smell of her hair, the press of her curves; he missed the tremors in her body that had settled slowly, slowly, as he held her, like the hands of a clock easing down. He missed the low heat that the closeness had fed in his body--here he felt himself flush--but she was not here and there was no harm again in acknowledging a fact, a thing that undeniably was. It was a small thing, a match struck in pitch darkness, but it was there, his desire for her body--what his _oma_ would have called the tug of a slow and ancient song. 

He wondered, lying beside the fire, shivering, if that flame had always been there, ever struck, or if it was the isolation, the forced closeness of the past several days, that had struck sulfur to pitch. Perhaps it was the grass in her hair, or the way her sun glowed in the sunlight, the way her laughter was made loud by the breeze.

Or perhaps it was how she looked at him out here, so far beyond the bonds of the castle, the strictures of propriety--none of which she’d ever cared much for, anyway. Indeed, there had been a small voice in him that had wondered if she would ignore the Hours completely, when they called for her; if she would turn her back on the oldest of the green world’s old ways. It would have been a difficult choice; there would have been discord within the castle and amongst the people, but if Loki had wished to take that path, Donar had no doubt she would have done so.

But she had not, had she? She had listened and she had come.

Except she had also allowed him to accompany her--a notable break with tradition. He chuckled to himself and stretched his feet towards the coals. Perhaps that had been rebellion sufficient. Despite her resistance, maybe Donar had unwillingly offered her the opportunity to come to the Hours on her own terms.

He liked that idea, he found. The smile lingered. Perhaps, through his stubbornness, he had unknowingly given his _reigna_ a gift.

It was in this way that at last sleep came to find him. It was in this way, at last, that he dreamed.

~~~~

  
When he opened his eyes again, he knew that he was dreaming. He was dreaming and he was terrified.

Terrified because of the cold, so unlike any he had ever known: it seemed to seem out of his pores and wrap its tentacles around him, holding him back from any hope ever again of feeling warm. He was wearing every stitch in which he slept, the two blankets wrapped about him besides, but he could not see the fire, could not sense it; his mind had thrown him thither and yon.

This, too, made him fear, this sense of not knowing, of being inside of his body and beyond it. He did not know, he could not, where the green world of his own mind he was.

The earth beneath him was soft and sinking and it was only then that he realized he could stand up. 

_Stand up_ , he told his dream-self, and he did, only to find that he was knee deep in muck. It was like the mud he had retreated from, part of the world that had sent him away, but now it seemed both thicker and easier to tread.

 _Move_ , he said to his legs, his feet. _Move._

The air about him smelled sweetly and he found he had lost the blankets, found his fingers tugging at the long ties of his cloak. He was shuddering with cold and yet he felt a drive to peel away layers, to divest himself of their strength and their weight: only when his skin touched the air, embraced wholly what lay around him, the logic of dreams told him, would he ever be truly warm again.

And still he moved. _Move. Move_.

He felt drawn towards something ahead of him, something that lay beyond the dream-branches of the dark. Each step he took, no matter how heavy, each layer he shed, no matter how precious--his silken undershirt, stitched in the way his _oma_ had taught him; a belt Bor had had woven for him of leather and bone--led him towards it, though in this dream, he could not see it, and yet he felt no doubt. A presence lay ahead of him, somewhere in the shadows, and he could not rest in these hours of sleep until he found it and crossed it with his tread.

 _Move_ , the sweet air murmured to him. _Move,_ elskede _, move._

In the way of dreams there was a moment when he walked and another when he stood still, his bare feet somehow clean, his body fully bare, and he knew that where he was was the place he was supposed to be, a place that was his, without question, even though what lay around him was still shadowed and dark.

His heart pounded its fists on his ribs and he felt a great spark of joy, deep inside, one that warmed him and chased the last of the bone cold away. He was aroused, too, his cock drawn high on his belly, and he touched it absently, saw as much as felt the jolt of pleasure his fingers roused. In this dream, Donar felt not himself, like himself. Awake and awake and alive.

And then the summons came again: _move. Move._

There was light now, a column of color in the distance, and now that his feet knew their purpose, they did not have to be commanded, they Knew.

Another breath, a dozen, and he stood at the edge of the light. There was a figure at its center, a woman, naked, her back towards him, her face turned upwards, smiling, her cheeks ablaze with the kiss of a thousand stars, and there was a roar of love in him, of something deeper than, and in this dream, he did not fight it, what he felt for Loki: he stepped out of the shadows and reached for her instead.

“ _Elskede_ ,” she whispered as he touched her hips, curved his hands over the tops of her thighs. “Move, my darling, move.”

And because it was a dream, because he wanted, because he loved her, he obeyed, joyful; caught his cock and nudged apart her thighs and pushed deep and perfect inside.


	8. Chapter 8

Loki stood at the edge of all things. Or so to her it seemed.

She had reached the edge of the Lake unclothed, her skin swallowed by mud. It had been in her hair, smeared between her breasts. She imagined she had felt it in her teeth. But when she stepped into the water, crystal gray touched by blue, it had overtaken her with every step. The waves had come up to her neck. She emerged, though, on the other side of everything clean and smooth and wet.

And _warm_. Ah, sweet gods; with every step she took away from the water, her skin felt like living fire. It was as if Donar were clutching her bare, soothing her with his touch and his breath, and as she moved towards the low white dome that had eased itself from the mist, she found that molton feeling was as true within her as it was without. She found herself sighing, filling the still, beautiful air with soft sounds of desire. She wanted him and he was not there. She wanted him and he could not be. 

And then she saw the pillar of light.

It was pouring in through the dome and she knew without looking that the dome’s eye was open and that above her lay the moon, unblinking.

The light was hers, and so were the Hours, the hands of the goddesses. They reached for her now and in another step, as she stepped into the moon’s glow, Loki the _reigna_ reached back.

_We have brought you the stars_ , the Hours whispered. _Caught them in our hands so that you might see them this night, Loki. Lift your face to ours, child, and see._

She did so without a thought--there was no need for thought here, only breath and sensation--and in return, the jewels of the night were tossed into her hands, made to drip over her face, and she felt--

_You love him_ , the Hours murmured as each star fell past. _You love him, Loki. It is time to let him love you back_.

“Yes,” Loki said so all the green world could hear. “Oh, yes.”

And then her hips were in his hands, hands that she would know in any darkness, and he was there with her, panting, his cock jutting urgently against her back, his voice in her ear, breaking:

“ _Doch_ , _liebe_. _Doch, doch_.”

“ _Elskede_ ,” she whispered as he stroked her skin, curved his hands over the tops of her thighs. 

She spread her legs and arched her back and when he pushed inside her, it was in one, rough molten slide and then his arms were around her and it was as it had been before: his chest at her back and his breath in her hair, but this time, he was crying out, making small, wounded sounds that made the softest parts of her flare and shudder and as they stood joined in the pillar of light, she felt a light within her, a great sort of unshuttering, as if her heart had been a dark room that now lay itself bare to sunlight.

The words were a slurry, the best sort of song: “Move, Donar,” Loki said into the stars. “Take me. Take me. _Move_.”

~~~~~

It was only then, as he withdrew from her honey and shoved back in to the root that Donar understood that he was not dreaming, that what he held was no haint: it was his _reigna_ he held and his _reigna_ he fucked and his _reigna_ who turned her face to his and pressed her mouth to his cheek and moaned out his name.

“Loki,” he grunted. The word seemed drenched in light. “Loki, _liebe_ , oh, _oh_!”

She was a river before him, moving, twisting, rushing back to meet him, and it excited him, how wet she was, the squeeze of her channel impossibly tight, and he felt pleasure coming, thunderclouds building at the base of his spine. She was his and he would fill her, again and again until what had always lain between them was sated at least for a little while. This was clear in Donar’s mind, the only thread left of anything that was not Loki, for he was drowning in her: the smell of her skin and the weight of her breasts and the eager, greedy pitch of her hips.

He moaned against the back of her neck and one slim hand flew up to clutch at his arm and the other slipped over her sex and he could feel the change in her when she found the tense bud at its center and slid her fingers over its bloom and then even the _Jungfer_ themselves could not have stopped his seed or the roar of his climax or the shiver that nearly struck him down as she rippled around him and filled the light around them with the sounds of his name.

_She loves you_ , _your Loki_ , the _Jungfur_ whispered to him, their words cool within his fevered thoughts. _Now is the time to let her love you back,_ erneut _and_ erneut _and_ erneut.

And so it was, even as the moon’s eye slid onward, as he withdrew from her body and she turned to him and raised her hands to his face, her thumbs climbing over its curves. Even as she pulled his head to hers and kissed him, her soft breasts teasing his chest. Even as she took his hand and let him from the light and tumbled with him onto a soft bed made of sweet ivy and greenmoss and grass.

“ _Erneut_ ,” she said as he lay his head between her thighs and lapped at the dark hair there, devoured the taste of her slick wound with his spend. 

_“Erneut_ ,” she sighed as he arched over her, trembling, the tip of his member stroking the butterfly wings of her entrance.

“ _Erneut_ ,” she moaned as she sank down on his cock, her skin damp from his tongue and his spunk her hair a storm about her shoulders, tangled. “ _Elskede_ , please, I need you again.”

He could not speak to her any longer, not with his voice; only with the shove of his hips and the broad, loving squeeze of his hands. But in those long, gorgeous Hours between them, reflections of the years that lay behind, each touch they traded, now skin against skin, spoke of love and as he moved once more inside the cradle of Loki’s body, as she clawed at his chest and threw her head back and came with a fierce, aching cry, that love seemed to Donar like nothing less than a creation of the divine.

“My love,” she said as he pressed her into the grip of the green world, his head bent to the silken heat of her breasts, her hands wound in his hair. “Oh, Donar, my love, _elskede_ , don’t stop, don’t stop, I need you. I need you.”

_And you have me_ , _Loki_ , he Knew, raising his mouth to find hers, to devour it, to sing devotion inside it. _You will never be without me again_.

  
  
~~~~

When Loki woke, there was honeyed wine at her side. She did not wonder at its appearance but felt only gratefulness; the need for refreshment was sudden and real. When she rose from the lee of Donar’s arm, he sighed softly and turned onto his back. Even in sleep, she saw, his body had roused itself again. It took effort to turn away.

She reached for the goblet and drank deeply. Shivered. Drank again.

Above them, in the open eye of the temple, the night sky still reigned. Some part of her recognized the strangeness in this--how long had they lain together? this part of her wondered; how many times had they coupled? Surely, the darkness should have softened at least to shadow by now. When would daylight come back?

“ _Liebe_.” Donar’s hand brushed her back. “Where are you going?”

“Nowhere, darling. There’s drink here. You should have some.”

“Tch,” he said, but when she turned, goblet in hand, he reached for it gratefully, and she watched him drink his fill. Yet it was full when he handed it back. 

She took a last sip and set it aside. “The Hours,” she said softly, “provide.”

When she kissed him, he sighed as he had before and opened his mouth. She lapped the taste of wine from his teeth.

“May I touch you?”

He played his fingers over her shoulder. “Please.”

His flesh was firm when her hand found it; rigid after a few slow, teasing strokes, and as much as her body called her to take him, there was something delicious about feeling him stiffen within her fist, about watching his handsome face quiver and his big body writhe. Delicious, too, to bend her head to his chest and nuzzles the scratches she’d left there, to take the hard feather nubs of his nipples into her mouth as she stroked him faster, chuckling as each new assault of her tongue made his back arch and his hands on her skin open and clench.

“Don’t tease me,” he grunted.

“Why not?” She closed her teeth around his nipple. “You seem to be enjoying it.”

“Loki--”

She lifted her head and smiled at him. “And seeing your pleasure this way is making me very wet.”

His cock jerked in her hand, a rip of noise rose from his throat. “ _Reigna_!”

“Yes, _livvakt_?”

Their eyes met. The air smoldered.

“Mmmm, tease me, sweet,” Donar murmured. He stroked her hair; there was ivy in his. “Watch my pleasure for as long as you like.”

When he came, he whimpered, creamy white dripping fast from her fist, and when the tremors had stopped, she lifted her slick fingers to her breasts and smeared the smell of him across her skin, rubbed his seed into her silken skin while she felt the sated heat of his gaze and when she was through, he drew her close and whispered: “Now, my love. Let me watch you.”

*****

There was sleep in soft grass, dreams within his embrace. And when she opened her eyes again, there was the pool.


End file.
